by Brian King
The feathery dinos congregated around the downed man in white. Several of them used giant hooked claws on their feet to tear into the guy’s flesh, then they drilled their snouts into the fresh spray of blood. There was nothing anyone could do for him. I think I knew it the moment he stumbled out of the jungle. It was fight or flight for real.
On an alien world.
With an alien ally.
Against fucking dinosaurs.
I followed Heracula for a few insane steps toward the pack of dinos, but we both stopped when one of the new feathered monsters re-oriented on us, sniffed the air, and then ran toward us. We were ready to defend ourselves while the lone dino ran our way, but I think it surprised us both when it jumped almost as high as the big man’s head. He managed to jab his spear with impressive speed and made pretty solid contact with his attacker. The spear went into the exposed belly of the green feathered raptor, but the wood also cracked in two from the impact.
The dino crashed into Heracula and ripped into his flesh with those nasty toe hooks. The big shark-man growled, and the pair fell to the ground locked in mortal combat. As they flailed, the dinosaur’s long tail whipped into me and sent me flying backward. I felt the air leave my lungs when my back smacked against the sand.
I pushed up to my feet, glanced up the beach, and saw two more raptors arrive near the dead man in white. They hovered there a moment as if deciding what to eat, then sprinted over toward Heracula.
“Not fucking good.” I exhaled with fear as the raptors plowed across the sand toward my ally.
The shark-man traded blows with the killing machine as he tried to get to his feet. I really wanted to help him, but by the time I’d grabbed my spear, Heracula had taken a huge gash to the side of his face from one of those hooked claws. He’d dealt his own damage: one of the dino’s arms was severed at the wrist, and the beast was flopping around on the sand while it screeched. Heracula tried to bite the dinosaur on the other arm, but the giant man wasn’t as agile as his opponent, and the injured raptor dashed away with a squawk.
Then the raptor turned and rushed the big warrior again as the two other feathered fuckers arrived to the fight.
“For Mistress Iridine!” the shark-man shouted a second before the raptors leapt onto him.
Heracula managed stay upright and on one knee, but the remainder of his spear was now a harmless stick. He tried to jam the stub of the spear into one of the jumping dinosaurs, but not even the powerful warrior could force it through the creature’s tough feathery skin. The jaws of the dinos never stopped opening and closing, and the hooked claws never stopped ripping. Every piece of exposed flesh was shredded; including those strange hoses. Some were damaged and hissed with purple steam. Others tore open and splashed that purple liquid from side to side. I cringed when one of the dinos planted its jaws right across the giant’s eyes.
I pointed my spear, ready to do my best with it even though I’d never so much as held one before, but there were now three raptor dinosaurs within ten feet of me, and my arms started to shake
The first dinosaur took a pause from ripping into Heracula’s face, and it hung its head low so it could hiss at me. Purple sludge dripped from its fangs and claws. It was blood from the alien shark man, and I knew I was too late to save the guy.
“Fuck me,” I muttered. Time to get out of here.
I was already too scared to move, but that condition was made worse when the hissing bastard took a step my way.
I stood frozen as if its hostile eyes alone had stopped me. I willed myself to disappear. I hoped to convince it I wasn’t a threat. Attacking it with my spear would be a threat. Running would be a threat. My only chance was to do nothing. It wasn’t cowardice to use the only useful weapon left in the arsenal: my brain. And I prayed the dino, and its friends had enough, uh, meat, to not want to bother with me.
The seconds ticked by, but still, it stared at me. I avoided looking at its eyes, thinking my gaze might antagonize it, because lots of animals took that as a challenge to their dominance.
I took a step back and thanked every god in the universe for restoring my movement. The dino seemed to tense but then relaxed a moment later, so I took another slow step.
It dropped its head, so it was almost touching the trembling shark man’s skull. The terrible wound was not a simulation or Hollywood fakery. It was the real shit. This was really happening.
I was on an alien world with a bunch of dinosaurs.
After a few more steps, the blood-drenched raptor went back to munch on the shark soldier with its two friends.
Sorry Heracula. I only knew you for a moment, but you seemed like a good dude. Hope you found glory.
I kept backtracking until I reached the line of trees. The small flock of feathered dinosaurs almost seemed happy as they clawed around in their new treasures. It sickened me to watch, but I couldn’t look away until I was positive I was out of their field of view.
When I was about a second away from calling it good, someone tapped me on the shoulders.
“Fuck! Dude! Don’t do that!” I gasped as I saw the alien monkey-looking man.
“Sorry. We’ve got to get out of here.” Sergeant Kelg sweated profusely, just like me. The heat was unbearable, yes, but I knew part of my perspiration came from fear of having our faces clawed off at any moment.
“I think you’re right. That armored tank of a guy got one swing with one of these chunky spears, and he was dead.” I motioned to the spears we held in our hands.
Kelg nodded, but then his eyes opened wide with surprise, and I realized he was actually looking behind me. I turned and saw at least two of the feathered dinos trotting toward us.
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” I said with a kick-start to my heart rate once more.
I did okay in sports. I could kick a soccer ball. Somewhat throw a football. Swim a lap or two. But I’d never been a great runner. If I had to pick between going for a long run or drilling holes in my fingernails I’d have plugged in the drill. Running just never appealed to me.
Yet, there’s no greater motivator than death to get one foot moving in front of the other. My flight response was already at redline, so I sprinted at a respectable clip through the shaded sandy area where the beach met the jungle. I imagined those claws and teeth were right behind me the whole way.
I surprised myself by passing the sergeant almost immediately. My legs seemed to work faster than his, and his face was covered with sweat in moments.
“Stay together!” he commanded as I got ten yards or so ahead of him.
I would never even think of leaving a man behind. Same as I would never leave injured animals out in the weather. It just wasn’t in my vocabulary. But he couldn’t know my sense of honor. We ran for a few more minutes, and every so often he would repeat his order as if I’d forget it.
“I’m not going to leave you,” I said while breathing heavily. I tried to look behind us, but I didn’t see our pursuers. I did hear their unusual chirps though, and it was enough to convince me that we couldn’t slow down any.
Maybe we could run for the ocean? Could dinosaurs swim? Did sharks exist in this era? I tried to think it through, but the ocean was a great unknown for me that was probably filled with all sorts of crazy monsters. At least on land, I could see the threats.
The area along the edge of the beach was thinned out by the wind and wave action of the water. I motioned so he would run deeper into the thicker part of the jungle away from the sand. I knew it would be slower going, but I’d seen those dinos move. We’d never outrun them on the open ground if they homed in on us.
“Good idea,” the sergeant replied. He wasn’t nearly as winded as me, and I wondered if he was sandbagging his run.
The jungle increased in density as if someone had planted it in a long wall just off the beach. Vines and ivy exploded all around us, and we became snared in it as if it was a net.
“Maybe they’ll get stuck through here, too,” Kelg wondered aloud.
�
��I wouldn’t count on it!” It was all I had to offer. It was exhausting squirming through the knots of ivy, but it seemed to thin out after a few minutes.
“Oh, thank the Holy Waters,” Kelg said in a quiet voice. “We’ve got something between them and us.”
Not far beyond the wall of ivy, we entered a sprawling field of flat black rocks like an asphalt parking lot broken apart by age. There were still tall trees and a high canopy around us, but the rocks seemed to resist the weeds and dense undergrowth of the surrounding jungle. We sped up the pace by bounding from rock to rock, and I noticed Kelg pick up a bit of distance on me. He seemed to have legs made more for leaping than running.
The chirping noises refused to go away, and we continued to run across the blacktop until Kelg suddenly stopped ahead of me. He held up his hand and raised two of his fingers in a gesture undoubtedly part of his military training.
“Quick, hide here in this crack.” He dropped his arm right next to him and indicated where I should go.
I hopped over and saw the problem right away.
“There’s only room for one,” I whispered. I could lay down end to end in the crack, and the dinosaur would have to walk right on top of me to see me. I saw where he was going with it.
“Trust me. I have a plan,” he replied.
I didn’t have time to think about it. Kelg was the military tactician. I expected his plan would be better than anything I could devise on the fly.
I slid into the long crack and held my breath while on my front side. I tried to forestall the waves of fear pulsing through my muscles. My heart was trying to break free of my chest so it could run away, and my lungs couldn’t seem to get air fast enough.
The sergeant put his hand over his closed mouth in what had to mean “stay quiet.”
As if I was thinking about shouting.
I nodded, and he ran away from my hidey hole. He didn’t go far. I heard him grunt several times, and I almost popped my head up to see what he was doing. He wasn’t screaming, so I didn’t think the dinos had found him.
I lay in that crack for a few minutes before I heard the chirping of the raptors from somewhere very close. All plans of leaving the nook to see what Kelg was working on vanished from my mind, and I tried to burrow myself into the rock.
Another chirp.
Super close by.
I willed myself to become one with the rock.
And then, impossibly loud, Sergeant Kelg started to laugh.
“I’m sorry, friend. You’ve got a warrior’s heart, if not his skill. I will note your contribution in my mission report.”
In my head, I yelled at him to be quiet, but it was only after I absorbed the words did I realize he was talking to me.
“I’ve never failed a mission. Today my goal is to stay alive. Your death will serve that end. So, if you’ll do me a favor and pop your head up, the creatures can feast upon you, and I can slip away unnoticed as you did with big ugly. My phalanx will hone in on my beacon and rescue me from this jungle world. Until then, all I have to do is find somewhere safe and stay alive.”
A branch or something fell close to my hiding place.
“It’s nothing personal. I wish I could have seen Lacey’s Home. You sincerely seem to miss it, but the code of the First Level Protector demands I survive at all costs.”
Another big piece of wood landed next to me and spun near the crack. If that didn’t get the dino’s attention, nothing would.
“It’s right next to you. Just stick your head up, and we can get this over with.” His chuffing laugh was now toxic to me.
I wanted to tell the snot-nosed mother fucker where he could shove his stick, but I hadn’t been found yet. I gripped my spear, ready for a final battle, and hoped I could get that one hit like Heracula had landed.
“It’s a good thing you can’t climb, you stupid feather lizard. Because I—”
There was a moment of silence.
I heard him say a word that might have been “Big plopper.” Then sergeant Kelg screamed. His voice suggested he was falling, and a moment later I heard a loud impact confirming my belief.
“Help me!” the alien man croaked, and I did peek out the lip of the crevice.
The dinosaurs were right there, just as he’d said. One of them must have climbed to his low perch and pulled him down. I cringed as I heard claws click on the rocks, and then I stifled my fear when I heard teeth tear into the other man’s flesh. It was all eerily similar to the last moments of the other two alien soldiers.
Now they’d gotten three of us.
I peeked my head over the rock and was almost slapped by a dinosaur tail. It only took one quick glance to see Kelg’s body. His fiery orange eyes were lifeless and stared right at me. Heracula would definitely say the asshole sergeant failed to find glory in his last seconds. Kelg’s head rocked from side to side as the hungry predators took bites from the exposed torso of their prize. Blood spattered across the rocks, and the dinosaurs let out noises that sounded like Southern California dove hoots.
They seemed occupied with the corpse of Kelg, but I knew they would find me hiding right next to them as soon as they were done feasting. I thought through my options and decided that my only hope was putting as much distance as I could between myself and the two feathery raptors.
There was nothing to be gained by waiting, so I hopped up out of my hole, tiptoed for a few moments, and then ran for it. The raptors had their back to me, but I had no idea if they’d turn around to give chase. I blazed across the remainder of the fake blacktop area; sure they were going to strike me down at any moment. It felt like an eternity, but a minute later I had returned to the mercifully dense jungle.
Somewhere behind me, the raptors gorged on the other man’s body.
I prayed that they wouldn’t follow me.
Chapter 3
I ran for a long time before my adrenaline finally burned off. I was left wheezing from exertion at the edge of a small and surprisingly happy-looking creek. My brain begged me to keep going, but my lungs, heart, and legs told my brain to fuck off. They were the ones doing all the work.
I dropped my spear, hunched over my knees, and forced myself to take a break. The forest was alive with buzzing, squeaking, howling, and tweeting, but the one sound I feared inside the larger symphony of noise was nowhere to be found. The distinct chirping of those feathery raptors had been left far behind.
The creek tumbled over little rocky ledges from somewhere above and continued down pretty much in the direction I’d come from. The undergrowth was so thick I could only see the six or eight feet to the opposite bank and maybe fifty yards in either direction. The sweat of running combined with the relentless humidity of the jungle made my shirt and pants cling to me as if they were afraid of the dinosaurs too. A soak in the creek and a long, cool drink of that water were exactly what I needed.
But Beatrice’s screechy voice cautioned me. “Are you fucking stupid, kid? Didn’t they teach you nuthin’ at that fancy college? You can’t drink water on the ground. It’s got cow shit in it.”
She never listened to me when I tried to explain my community college was anything but fancy. But more to the point she never explained where all these cows were coming from and why they chose random streams as their toilets. I’d only seen a few cows in all my years at Mom and Dad’s clinic, and those were from wealthy people’s hobby farms.
I stared at the playful splashing of the clear water as it entered a little pool nearby. But cows and their bathroom habits were in my head now.
“Damn you, Beatrice,” I whispered. There undoubtedly were bacteria and parasites in the water, and it was probably in my best interest not to drink it.
As a compromise, I set my outback hat on a rock and dunked my head in the creek to cool off. It was surprisingly warm, like bathtub water. Still, it was cooler than my skin, and I did my best to just enjoy the refreshing feel.
I tried to look at my reflection in the water, but there were too many ripples acr
oss the surface of the creek. Maybe my face or eyes held some clue about what was happening to me, but something howled from the jungle downstream and cut off any thoughts of such research.
I grabbed my hat, slapped it on with a wet smack, and started up the stream bed. It was a sort of road through the impenetrable jungle. There were fewer tangles of vines and brush to hop through, and it instantly became a kind of landmark on my mental map. My dad was one of those guys who always liked to know where he was going. I did as well, but I had no way of knowing the best direction to go in this crazy alien world.
As I stumbled up the creek, I thought of everything but my parents and my missed visit with them. Exhaustion made that a lot easier.
Had I really been abducted by aliens and dropped on this world? Why? And why me?
A lifetime of playing video games, reading comic books, and watching videos of people playing video games and talking about comics should have given me some insight on what was happening to me, but it didn’t.
It wasn’t virtual reality. That had been grasping at straws from the beginning. It isn’t like there’s a simulation where your whole body can be inside the fake world. VR was crazy, but the idea of being captured by aliens seemed even more insane.
A coma? A disease? Terrorist attack? Was there some kind of threat reported on the television I’d missed? I never paid attention to the news.
Maybe it was time travel?
I chewed on that as I hopped up on a big rock next to the flowing water of the creek. I’d been walking for many minutes and was getting higher on the hillside, but I still couldn’t see anything below me besides more jungle. Maybe if I could see more of my surroundings, I could figure things out.
But time travel did make some sense. It would explain the dinosaurs, certainly, and the jungle had big ferns and funny looking trees I didn't remember ever seeing in the LA suburbs or the hills above them. And maybe the beach was actually Venice from 65 million years ago.
